Excerpt from The History of the Bunker Hill Monument Association: During the First Century of the United States of America When first elected Secretary, he found scarcely any of the original papers on file. By continuous search and inquiries, he has been able to collect, during the last forty years, from the descendants or family friends of the prominent founders, a large mass of scattered material. The'newspapers of the period have supplied many details. Some of the matter quoted is of a trivial character, and some of a high order: taken together, it may serve as an index of the times of the former generations, and may help to give a nearer view of the eminent men who figured in them. Acknowledgments are due to Mr. Ernest Edwards of London, now with J. R. Osgood Company, the inventor of the heliotyping process, who has found out the way to multiply copies of the photograph in a durable form, - an art superior to the art of printing, as it reproduces the exact text and every form of fac-simile illustration. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

The commemorative tradition in early American art is given sustained consideration for the first time in Sally Webster's study of public monuments and the construction of an American patronymic tradition. Until now, no attempt has been made to create a coherent early history of the carved symbolic language of American liberty and independence. Establishing as the basis of her discussion the fledgling nation's first monument, Jean-Jacques Caffi?'s Monument to General Richard Montgomery (commissioned in January of 1776), Webster builds on the themes of commemoration and national patrimony, ultimately positing that like its instruments of government, America drew from the Enlightenment and its reverence for the classical past. Webster's study is grounded in the political and social worlds of New York City, moving chronologically from the 1760s to the 1790s, with a concluding chapter considering the monument, which lies just east of Ground Zero, against the backdrop of 9/11. It is an original contribution to historical scholarship in fields ranging from early American art, sculpture, New York history, and the Revolutionary era. A chapter is devoted to the exceptional role of Benjamin Franklin in the commissioning and design of the monument. Webster's study provides a new focus on New York City as the 18th-century city in which the European tradition of public commemoration was reconstituted as monuments to liberty's heroes.